Identity theft and identity fraud (pretending to be someone you are not) is a large problem in online, and even telephonic, communication. In the 2003 movie, “Bringing Down the House,” a female con artist tricks Steve Martin into thinking she's the woman he's been talking to online. True, she is in the picture he sent her, but she was actually in the background of someone else's portrait, being arrested by police.
While the above is a fictional example, unfortunately, such problems do occur in real life and can be very dangerous. As a result, they are also disruptive to commerce, since the trustworthiness of information in online networks is called into doubt. For example, in a popular television show, “Dr. Phil,” aired Feb. 20, 2013, host Phillip Calvin McGraw interviewed a woman who, over time, sent $185,000 to a Nigerian scam artist who pretended to be her boyfriend. They met on an online dating site and continued to “date” via the phone and email for over a year. Meanwhile, another woman appeared on the show to prove that she was real, and her photographs, shared on a social media website and publicly viewable, were being used by another woman to extort money out of at least three different men who thought they were “engaged” to the woman in the pictures.
The prior art has attempted to deal with this problem. US Patent Publication 2012/0180115 to Maitland has a person send an image showing a verification code in the image. US Patent Publication 2012/0106805 to Shuster and US 2009/0169062 to Cheung et al. have a person strike a certain pose in the image sent. Further, U.S. Pat. No. 8,516,562 to Headley uses a “biometric template” including voice data, and comparing such data to the prior user. This method, however, is limited to verifying by “device id” and prior logins and, as such, does not appear to verify anything other than consistency of a voice from a certain location.
There remains a long felt need to authenticate users as being who they say they are. Given the long-standing continuing problem is this area, further work needs to be done.